Lost Northwest Pilots Were Trying Out New Software 518
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew about 110 miles past their destination to the skies over Wisconsin as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations tried to get the plane's attention had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall. 'Both said they lost track of time,' said an interim report from the National Transportation Safety Board countering theories in aviation circles that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit. 'Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight,' said a statement from Delta Airlines, 'is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination.' Industry executives and analysts said the pilots' behavior was a striking lapse for such veteran airmen who have a total of 31,000 flying hours of experience between them. In the case of Flight 188, 'Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival,' the interim report said."
Radio Reception? (Score:4, Interesting)
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless? I'm guessing they had their headphones off (if such are even used), but I would think that there would be blinking lights at a minimum, and hopefully any voices would come through. If nothing else, they should be tuned into some kind of emergency frequency no matter what.
It seems to me something is either designed wrong, or the pilots were being much more inattentive than one would expect from even someone using a laptop.
Any pilots or other I am a somethings around?
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet shooting down the plane would be a last resort, if the plane was on a collision course with a "sensitive" target. Likely the fighters would escort the passenger jet for awhile trying to gather as much information as possible.
It's a tough job (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously the pilots should have paid more attention, but I suspect the reason they were trying to squeeze in a little extra work is that they weren't going to get paid to learn the scheduling system on their own time.
Pilots go through years of expensive schooling and have to repay their student loans like everyone else. Their salaries start around $20,000 [salon.com] if they can get hired in a very competitive market.
Remember the hero pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson, saving Flight 1549 and 155 people's lives? [mercurynews.com]
the last talk [Capt. Sullenberger] had with his wife, Lorrie, before the crash... was about money.
Like thousands of airline workers, his salary had been cut in half and he lost most of his pension. At 58, the 29-year veteran faced having to find work outside the industry and possibly having to sell his house.
Many pilots take second jobs. Some are on food stamps [michaelmoore.com]:
He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he's paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.
I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people's wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible -- and received -- food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.
"I have a second job!," the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop.
Similar Distraction in 2006 Brazilian Collision (Score:4, Interesting)
There was an incredibly detailed account of the Brazilian midair collision in September 2006 that identified pilots trying to figure out the flight control systems on their new Legacy 600 as one of the distractions that led to the collision. Some of the controls were on a glass panel display, and there was also a laptop that distracted them. Apparently, as they were clicking around on stuff, they shut off their transponder.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/air_crash200901 [vanityfair.com]
Even more concerning, was the author's argument that the accuracy of GPS guided autopilot systems also contributed. Historically, even if two planes ended up at the same flight level, headed towards each other, the inherent sloppiness in the autopilot systems would actually increase the chance of a miss. Now, with autopilots capable of keeping planes within very close tolerances of their ideal flightpath, the same two planes accidentally occupying the same flight level may have a much higher chance of colliding.
Re:Not sure how I feel about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Some fancy auto pilots will alert when the flight vector has been achieved.
However most autopilots in a basic mode will simply just make sure a plane maintains heading and elevation. For I think all of US air space this basic autopilot is all that is needed as the US is basically one big highway in the sky where planes simply plop them selves in a sky lane and follow it. None of this fancy find me the fastest route and make sure I don't hit anything else sorta autopilot.
US air space is basically running as if it was 1960 still. You wouldn't fly if you saw what the majority of airports was using for radar :)
Re:Oh, puhlease (Score:5, Interesting)
Each air traffic control region has an alternate frequency. So yah if they didn't bother to change the frequency they were on they wouldn't hear squat.
This is a non-event. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Radio Reception? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. Each control zone has a unique frequency.
However since they were on their laptops if someone had sent them an IM, Twitter, or email they would have probably been alright.
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:5, Interesting)
No. A shootdown would have been nearly impossible in this situation. This was stupid, and both pilots should and probably will be terminated over it, but the passengers were never in any real danger.
The initial theory at ATC on this was probably that they had a radio failure. Radios fail, so there are procedures to deal with it. 110 mile overshoot at aircraft speeds probably means they were out of radio contact for 15-20 minutes of flight time after passing their destination. ATC was probably still working down through their checklist while dealing with the rest of the radio traffic at the same time. The aircraft has lots of reserve fuel as per FAA regs, and the plane was following its assigned flight path (a little longer than scheduled, but it wasn't going whacko, so the assumption might have been that the crew had a radio or other mechanical issue and were trying to deal with it).
ATC obviously verified that their flight path was clear, which put a tad more load on them, but they were at cruising altitude and there's plenty of room up in Class A airspace. And if they had flown over something sensitive enough to have a restricted zone up at 37,000 feet (which would be exceptionally rare, most MOAs only extend up to class A airspace, not into it), the military would have scrambled a couple of fighters to pay them a visit. If they didn't notice the fighters themselves, I'm sure some passenger would alert a stewardess and the pilots would have jumped on the emergency band in a big fat effing hurry, or if they really had a radio out watched for the wings to waggle and followed them to a runway. It's hard to miss a fighter 20 feet off your nose, and those guys are pretty damned good at getting close enough to be noticed without inducing turbulence.
I imagine a few people at ATC were just starting to get worried, since it could also be crew incapacitation (fun facts to know and tell - if you lock the very reinforced flight door from the crew side and both crewmembers die or become incapacitated, you're pretty much screwed - no Patrick Swayze bad movie moments of private pilots landing the plane at their favorite airstrip causing fun and mayhem but saving lives - just simple fuel starvation and uncontrolled descent into terrain). I'm sure there was the sound of a few strained sphincters unclenching when Dumb and Dumber got on the horn and acknowledged that they were simply distracted.
This was incredibly dumb, and deserves termination or at least a very, VERY strong reprimand, but at no time were the passengers in any danger.
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:3, Interesting)
An early report I saw stated that air traffic guided them through some maneuvers before they landed, to ensure that they still had control of the plane (apparently standard procedure in such a situation).
Re:Bad. Real Bad. (Score:1, Interesting)
As a person who has actually written a PBS, my experience from talking with airline workers is that PBS generates MUCH higher satisfaction rates than traditional bidline systems. Bidline works okay for the top few members of each group, but does very little for juniors because there are only a few lines left to choose as you go through seniority (if there are 500 people, there might be 400 lines, so the person with seniority 300 has only 100 choices of lines, all of which usually suck)
It's true that the bids can be a little bit complex, but we did try to make an effort to make the bidding syntax logical and as simple as possible.
Re:Similar Distraction in 2006 Brazilian Collision (Score:2, Interesting)
a similar incident happened over hawaii as well: <URL:http://blogs.abcnews.com/rapidreport/2008/02/sleeping-pilots.html>
JP
Commercial Multi Engine Pilot
Re:Bad. Real Bad. (Score:1, Interesting)
The language used to express your preferences is generally designed for the programmers, not the users.
I'll say it again;
Engineers make the worst software developers.
I can just about guarantee this software was written or designed by an engineer (or engineers) turned programmer.
As jellomizer put it... (Score:4, Interesting)
I am surprised that anyone is able to keep their job. Where an honest mistake where no one was harmed causes someone to loose their career. I would feel more comfortable riding in a plain from a pilot who has a relatively good record and made a mistake and got severely corrected As they know the severity of their mistake, and are extra careful not to make an other one. Vs. a Pilot who has a good records but has gone too comfortable with their job, and will be likely to make their first mistake.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
I Hit Ctrl-C after I realized it was taking way to long. However, I cleared out about 2 weeks of work. Plus my personal documents. Needless to say I learned to backup more freaklently and the value of a good source control system. But If I were to get fired after that mistake and forced to switch careers then I wouldn't be able to apply my new learned methods.
That is why I cringe whenever there is a big mistake and people go well I hope that guy gets fired. Because the guy who did the mistake and especially if he was honest about it, would probably be so much more careful the nest time around. Who I would be more worried about is the guy who fired him. As part of the mistake is on him too. For not making sure they are safe guard in place.
I have had the same kind of experience at work. Except I *WAS* fired for it. Kind of sucks when you are designing a $20000 dollar circuit board in your first month and you put the PGA socket lands in backwards. Needless to say, I didn't make that mistake again. It also made it kinda hard to get a new job...
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Here [slashdot.org]
Re:Isn't it truly frightening (Score:3, Interesting)
His latest movie isn't compelling, and his fact-checkers fell down on the job this time around. It's barely even entertaining. I don't recommend it. That doesn't mean what he reports is untrue -- he talked to these guys, he saw a pay stub.
(Previous efforts have been much more enlightening and educational. I do recommend Columbine, Fahrenheit, and especially Sicko.)
Re:Bad. Real Bad. (Score:1, Interesting)
I probably worked on the software in question, and none of us were engineers. We took a lot of effort to make the bidding language as easy as possible.
Re:Yep! (Score:4, Interesting)
As they say, piloting is "hours of boredom interspersed by moments of sheer terror." :)
It's true though - huge numbers of logged hours just don't seem as impressive when a ton of it was on auto-pilot. Bigger planes are certainly harder to fly, but it seems like the smaller simpler planes require you to ALWAYS be flying it rather than at those interspersed moments.
The first flight lesson I took about 5 years ago was with a WW2 veteran bomber pilot (he's since passed away :(). He still logged every flight but had stopped counting his hours over a decade earlier - having counted more than 20,000 at that time. He had time in some larger aircraft (B-17's and such) but all of it was in prop-driven low-electronics aircraft. He literally drove out to the plane in one of those little mobile scooters for seniors; he couldn't really walk too well anymore at his age, but once he got in that plane and took off you could feel that this guy was a true pilot. Despite this being my first time up in a plane (literally - my first time ever in the air was a lesson) and his obviously frail condition, I had no worries at all.
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's a tough job and it pays accordingly (Score:3, Interesting)
I see that real estate agents are on the list; I have one in my family, and while it doesn't require a great deal of training, any agent that is making a lot is going to be on call and working literally any time they are awake or can be awakened by the incessant ringing of their cell phone. Rich douchebags may call on a Saturday morning and want a viewing/purchase arranged NOW NOW NOW, and then they will keep bothering you with stupid shit after they have bought/rented the property, and you may have to act as the ref. between renter and landlord. Also the whole field seems to be thoroughly BS-ified with non-compete agreements, union-like organizations, etc, and of course since it attracts those who worship the little green god, there are many backstabbing lowlifes working in the field. It's not a job I'm jealous of in any way. I always say, money can't buy time.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with your points about the problems with automation - I avoid driving much with cruise control for the same reason - having to micro-manage my speed helps keep me alert. Sure, I could pay more attention to other things without having to do it, but in reality I'd pay less attention.
I'm not sure that firing pilots who fall asleep is going to help either.
I liked something I saw for airport security screeners - who face similar problems (they screen thousands of packages and 99.99999% of the time there is nothing to see). It was an x-ray machine that would add in images of contraband for the operator to spot - if an operator didn't hit a button when one was spotted then it would alert a supervisor. It gave the operator something to actually do, and thus it kept them alert.
Maybe the plane needs to trigger a random simulated failure (caution light or whatever) that requires a button to be hit to clear the condition (FMS would avoid triggering it at critical moments, and the operator would have plenty of time to deal with other stuff first). Or, maybe the cockpit should have officially-sanctioned ways to do things like check email/etc which will do things like pop up occasional messages to do a visual scan and which will blank the screen the instant an alert of some kind occurs. Or, maybe there is some task the crew could perform that is more mentally stimulating than staring out the window at blue sky.
The human brain is a machine - a complex one, but a machine nonetheless. It has certain limitations. In particular, it gets bored if you don't give it something to do. This is biology, and simply telling pilots not to be bored doesn't fix the problem. Likewise, the human brain requires sleep, and if people are overworked they won't get enough of that.
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh, "Pop-up TFRs" (TFR = Temporary Flight Restrictions). The bane of every private pilot's existence since 9/11. Terribly inconvenient when they are announced before you take off, and somewhat more inconvenient if they are declared while you're inside one.
Kinda like a thunderstorm, with more ammo and less predictability.
Fortunately, the fine uniformed ladies and gentlemen who fly the intercepts have good judgment and a deep reluctance to shoot down unarmed gnats, so it hasn't been a fatal mistake... yet.
Because, God forbid should a Cessna weighing less than a Pinto and capable of a blistering 125 miles per hour get within 30 nautical miles of the President, Vice President, or any sporting event in progress...
I mean, after all, look at all the deaths caused by terrorist activities based in small aircraft.
What's that you say?
No, I couldn't find them either.